Glacial-Age Man in South America? A Critical Review

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to place the dispute about early man in South America in historical context and to review the most convincing and important evidence that has been put forward. Essentially no skeletal remains–either in North or South America–have survived recent scrutiny and direct dating by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and small CO2 counters. Only a handful of North American sites still are considered likely to be pre-Clovis, but the concept of an earlier, generalized hunting-and-gathering adaptation remains popular. In South America the pre-Paleoindian sites of the 1960s and 1970s are reevaluated and found to present only weak or negative indications of early occupation. Recently discovered sites in Brazil and Chile are examined critically, and the evidence is questioned. The results of this survey and evaluation suggest that we still lack the absolutely certain case that would be necessary to support the hypothesis of glacial-age occupation. Moreover, the probability of demonstration is seen to decrease, rather than increase, as the Paleoindian horizon increasingly is defined with more certainty while only equivocal cases are marshalled for an Archaic-like pre-Paleoindian stage. In summarizing prehistory, archaeologists should depend more on unambiguous and replicated cases, rather than on regional exceptions. More interpretive caution is needed, especially where there are possibilities of mixture and secondary deposition. Natural processes often mimic cultural patterns, confusing the positive identification of informal hearths and simple artifacts.

The late Pleistocene cultures of South America

“…Until recently, the earliest archeological record of South America was viewed uncritically as a uniform and unilinear development involving the intrusion of North American people who brought a founding cultural heritage, the fluted Clovis stone tool technology, and a big-game hunting tradition to the southern hemisphere between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago. [1][2][3] Biases in the history of research and the agendas pursued in the archeology of the first Americans have played a major part in forming this perspective. [4][5][6] Despite enthusiastic acceptance of the Clovis model by a vast majority of archeologists, several South American specialists have rejected it.…”

“…6,10,12,15 Some proponents prefer a long chronology of 20,000 to 45,000 years ago, 8 while others advocate a short chronology of 15,000 to 20,000 years ago [10][11][12] or only 11,000 years ago. [1][2][3] the growing cultural experience and constantly changing lifestyle of Homo sapiens sapiens resulting from having traversed the entire span of the Western Hemisphere.…”

El Primer Descubrimiento De America

“…De esta posibilidad resultan dos interpretaciones; una es Ia utilización directa de geofactos por el hombre en Ia medida que estos pueden cumprir funciones similares a Ias de Ios verdadeiros artefactos y otra, Ia más frecuente, su identificación errónea como artefatos (Bednarik 1989, Lynch 1990). …”

“…No podemos abundar aquí sobre los argumentos esgrimidos por una y otra parte; seiíalemos que Ia polémica no se limita únicamente aI origen antrópico de los objetos encontrados, sino que se refiere también a Ia correcta identificación de otras estructuras arqueológicas, como fogones y estructuras de madera, y a Ia interpretación estratigráfica de los sitios (Lynch 1990, Guidon 1989, Dillehay y Collins 1991, Gruhn y Bryan 1991.…”

Geoarchaeology of Palaeo-American Sites in Pleistocene Glacigenic Deposits

“…It is illogical and by any reasoning unfounded to assume just a rather late (Final) Pleistocene peopling of the Americas (Lynch, 1990;Hoffecker et al, 1994;Goebel et al, 2008, etc. ), when the Early and Middle Palaeolithic people clearly colonized the vast regions of the adjacent Siberia and the Far East along the Pacific rim long before that time.…”